A/N: Happy birthday to the fabulous Chiisana Minako! Thanks for your awesome beta reading and wonderful words of encouragement.

To everyone else, thank you so, so much for all the kind reviews. I really do appreciate every single one, and I will eventually try to give you the individual thanks you all deserve, but at the moment every spare minute is going to finalizing this monster. Hope to get back to you soon, though. In the meantime, thank you again, and enjoy.

xxxx

Van Pelt called Lisbon and told her she and Rigsby were making progress. The social worker, Clarissa Allen, remembered O'Laughlin, but didn't know any of the other names Rigsby and Van Pelt had mentioned to her. She told them they were welcome to search the files if they wanted to, but they'd have to go to a storage facility in another town, because they didn't keep records that old on site and no one had ever bothered to digitize them. Rigsby and Van Pelt drove down to the storage facility and had found years' worth of files in a state of disorganized chaos.

Despite the circumstances, Van Pelt seemed determined to follow through. She asked Lisbon if it was okay if they stayed down there for a couple of days to see if they could find anything in the massive quantity of files. On the condition that they continued the check ins, Lisbon agreed.

When they returned to the office two days later, Rigsby was staggering under the weight of two boxes worth of files and Van Pelt was buzzing with barely suppressed excitement.

"We found something," Van Pelt announced before Rigsby had even had time to set down his burden.

Lisbon was poring over the map she had pinned to the bulletin board, trying to match up sites of Red John killings with various water projects all over the state while Cho and Jane discussed a theory Cho was working on about Gupta, but they all stopped what they were doing when Rigsby and Van Pelt came in and turned their attention to them.

"Do tell, Grace," Jane said as Rigsby set down the boxes on his desk.

"Craig went to see his social worker at the beginning of the summer when he was supposed to be at that football camp," she informed them.

"Why was that?" Jane asked, perching on the edge of Cho's desk.

"Apparently he was looking for information about his grandfather. He wanted to get in touch with him."

Lisbon frowned, leaning against Rigsby's desk. "If he had a grandfather, why was he placed in foster care?"

"Apparently the grandfather was deemed not to be a suitable guardian. There was some evidence of abuse. It wasn't conclusive, but enough for a judge to determine that Craig shouldn't be left with him."

"Is that where you think he went the rest of that summer? To find his grandfather?"

"Couldn't have been. The grandfather died three years before Craig went to ask about him. The social worker found that out after he came to talk to her. She was looking into whether Craig would be allowed to see him, if they found him. Apparently they might have worked out some kind of supervised visitation situation even if he couldn't go live with his grandfather. But it ended up being a moot point because when she tried to find him, she found out he'd died of lung cancer a few years earlier."

"She told O'Laughlin all this?"

Van Pelt shook her head. "She promised to look into it and set up an appointment for the following week to touch base with him. She did the research and talked to her supervisor about the situation and everything, but he never showed up to the second appointment, so she didn't have a chance to tell him what she'd found out."

"Why do you think he wanted to talk to his grandfather so badly?"

"The social worker seemed to think O'Laughlin and the grandfather had kind of a twisted relationship," Rigsby said.

"But she was still helping him reconnect with him?" Lisbon said. "That seems suspicious."

Rigsby shook his head. "I don't think so. She figured he was having some kind of trouble or he wouldn't have come in to talk to her. I think she believed talking to the grandfather could help O'Laughlin get some kind of closure on everything that happened with his family. His real family, I mean. The one he had before he was adopted."

"What happened with his family?" Jane asked.

"The social worker told us that O'Laughlin was in foster care because his whole family died in a house fire. Both of his parents and his little sister. The police suspected O'Laughlin had something to do with it, but they didn't have any evidence."

"O'Laughlin set his own family on fire?" Lisbon said, horrified.

"Guess he developed his taste for arson early in life," Jane commented.

"It was definitely arson?" Cho asked.

"Yes," Rigsby affirmed. "I was able to reach out to the fire marshal while we were down there and he let me take a look at the file. They weren't able to prove it wasn't an accidental house fire, but all the signs of arson are there if you know what to look for. No way to tell it was O'Laughlin for sure, of course, but based on the way it was set, it would have had to have been someone who was familiar with the house and had access to the inside. If it was him, he was already a pretty sophisticated arsonist already by ten."

"So lighting someone up in a jail cell would have been no great effort for him," Jane concluded.

Van Pelt shook her head. "I still can't get my head around it. How could he go from being this disturbed kid to suddenly seeming like he had it all together in such a short space of time?"

"If your theory's right, that means Red John probably spent that whole summer training him how to charm people into giving him his way," Jane said. "He would have taught him to hide his true self from the outside world. You falling in love with him was not an unlucky coincidence—he was assigned to make you fall in love with him so Red John would have an inside track on our investigations. You were targeted specifically—he would have made it his business to find out what kind of man you would be likely to fall for. Red John did everything in his power to make sure he had the wherewithal to do so."

Van Pelt did not look comforted by this. "There's more."

"Go on."

"Dumar Tanner, Ron Deutsch, and Todd Johnson all went through foster care in that county," Van Pelt said. "They were all placed in homes by the same social services office."

Lisbon's blood went cold. "You're sure?"

"Absolutely sure."

"The social worker," Cho said. "She must have been the one to place them."

Van Pelt shook her head. "No. I checked. They all had different case workers. It's all there in the files."

"There has to be a connection we're missing," Jane said. "Some way that Red John learned about all four of those boys."

"Maybe Red John is a cop," Lisbon suggested. "If he works for the county sheriff's office, he might have been the one to respond to the house calls that ended up bringing each of them into the system in the first place."

"That's possible. Or he has some connection to the social services office directly."

"He might have worked there himself," Rigsby said. "Maybe he just saw them come into the office and picked them out that way."

"There are a thousand ways he could have found out about them," Jane said. "The important thing is that one key person somehow linked them together. There must be at least one person who came across all three of those cases at one point or another, and that person either is Red John, or works for him."

"I can check into the police angle," Rigsby offered. "See if it's possible the same officer answered calls to all their houses."

"I'll look into employees at the social services agency," Van Pelt said. "Try to find out if there was anyone else at the agency who might have been involved in all three cases somehow. Who knows, it could a file clerk or somebody like that."

"I have an ex who works for social services here in Sacramento," Cho said. "I can ask her if she has any ideas about how three cases with different social workers might be connected."

"I'll go with you," Van Pelt said. "It might give me some ideas about where to start within the Stockton office."

The three of them left Jane and Lisbon standing in the bullpen, the boxes of files on Rigsby's desk between them.

Lisbon looked at Jane. She couldn't believe it. They'd done it. They'd finally found a real, solid lead. True, they were still a long way from having a positive ID on Red John, but they had a indisputable connection between four of Red John's disciples. For once, they were half a step ahead of him, instead of three steps behind. It didn't feel real. They'd been chasing him so long, part of her believed in her heart of hearts they were never going to catch him. This was the first real progress they'd made in what felt like forever. On the one hand, she felt euphoric with the thrill of discovery. On the other hand, to finally be closing in on the monster was almost terrifying—there was little hope that the beast wouldn't lash out before it was backed into a corner. This discovery had suddenly and dramatically raised the stakes for all of them. She struggled to express some of this to the man next to her, but all she managed was, "Jane."

As usual, he seemed to understand what she was thinking without her having to put it into words. "I know," he said, reaching out and squeezing her hand gently. He smiled ruefully. "Chalk one up for honest police work."

She smiled despite herself. "Damn straight." Then her smile faded. "It's almost certain he's going to find out now, you know."

"Let's not borrow trouble," Jane said, withdrawing his hand from hers. "It hasn't happened yet."

Lisbon was not mollified. "If he has someone on the inside and they find out the CBI is poking around before we figure out who it is, they'll tip him off."

"I agree with you," Jane said placatingly. "But not if we catch them first."

Lisbon shook her head. "You don't really believe that's how it's going to happen, do you?"

"No," he said reluctantly. "Given our luck with this case, it would be nothing short of a miracle if it did."

"You don't believe in miracles," she pointed out.

"If we finally manage to catch him and all get out of the final confrontation unscathed, I might reconsider my position on that point."

"Oh, God," she said, twisting her hands together in sudden panic. "I forgot to remind the team about the check ins."

"They know, Lisbon," he said gently. "They won't forget. You've been quite effective with your nagging."

"They're all in even more danger than before," she fretted.

"They know the risks," he reminded her. "Just as you do."

Lisbon passed a hand over her eyes. "I'll never forgive myself if something happens to one of them because of this."

"How do you think I feel?"

"Jane…"

He shook his head. "It's no use trying to assure me that it wouldn't be my fault if something happened to one of you. It would have about as much effect as any such assurance on my part would have on you in this particular situation, I imagine."

Lisbon couldn't think of anything to say to that. Jane picked up the lid from the top box and started leafing absently through the first file. Lisbon's thoughts, however, had turned in a different direction.

"Guess all this blows my theory about the dams out of the water," she said ruefully.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Jane said, his nose still buried in the file. "I wouldn't give up on it just yet."

"You wouldn't?"

He shrugged. "I don't see Red John working in a social services office, living the life of an office drudge for years, just to recruit vulnerable young people to his cause, do you? I think it's much more likely that someone connected to the organization has been helping him, whether it's a cop as you suggested or someone who works directly for the social services office."

"But if he works in construction, how would he have connections with a social services office?"

"Who knows? Maybe he has some personal connection with someone there. All I'm saying is it's too early to dismiss any viable theory out of hand."

She glanced at him. "Does this mean you're going to follow up with the cult thing?"

"Yes. I think I could still learn a thing or two from Bret Stiles."

Lisbon shuddered. "Be careful. I don't care if you don't think he's Red John, Stiles gives me the creeps."

"I'll promise to be careful if you will," he said.

"I'm always careful," Lisbon said defensively.

He rolled his eyes. "Except when you take down a suspect twice your size or decide to defuse a bomb to save a little girl's life."

"That happened one time," Lisbon protested.

"That was one time too many, to my taste. In any case, you take my point."

"Fine, I promise I'll be careful." Lisbon looked at him expectantly. "Now you."

"I will, too," he promised in his turn.

"God, I can't wait for a time when we can go through a day without being in a state of constant worry," Lisbon sighed.

"Yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it?" Jane agreed.

"Maybe our luck will hold and we'll find a way to end this soon," she said grimly.

He certainly hoped so. For all their sakes.